


i know places we won't be found

by spacelabrathor



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Comics), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, F/M, Knotting, Scenting, Seriously so Soft, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:41:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23373343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacelabrathor/pseuds/spacelabrathor
Summary: Alpha Thor lives an intentional life of solitude up in a little cabin on the face of a remote mountain. His days are spent tracking game and walking the acres of land, reveling in the peace and quiet his life brings. Until, one day, a frantic omega, running from something, crosses his path. Then, Thor is presented with a choice - one that could upend his deliberately isolated life forever.
Relationships: Thor (Marvel)/Original Female Character(s), Thor (Marvel)/Reader
Comments: 63
Kudos: 542





	i know places we won't be found

The mountain is unforgiving, even in the summer months, its jagged facade covered in dense forests of conifers that leave the uneven ground of shale and stone darkly shaded and covered in a bed of slippery, fallen needles. The incline is steep and unpredictable as one summits to the peak, straining to breath in the thinning air, apparent footholds of velvet moss giving way to deep, crooked crevices in the ridged rock at the faintest application of weight. **  
**

It is a place that few venture and fewer stay, and in that barren isolation, Thor finds his solitude. 

He resides on a swath of land that no one has ever cared to precisely demark, acres of wild on the precipice of a great summit, in a simple cabin made of log and lichen and shingle, and powered by a wood burning stove in the far corner that throws off waves of powerful heat in the dead of winter. 

It is a simple life, one of fogged breath on early mornings and long, meandering days spent patrolling the land. Touching gently at hoofprints in the soft earth and moving silently through the trees on the track of them. Carrying a doe slain with hallowed reverence and a knife gripped in his palm back to the cabin over his shoulders, stringing her up in the clearing outside the cabin and parting her out with care as the sun finally sets behind the mountain’s peak. Washing her blood from his hands in a bucket of icy water from the nearby spring, rubbing the back of his neck with a dampened cloth and watching it come away dark from the dirt under his nails. 

To Thor, the mountain is peace. There are no conflicts, no chest thumping or challenges from other alphas, no disruption or chaos, save for the quiet symbiosis of his life as it intertwines with that of nature on the mountain. 

It is a life that Thor has chosen, and one he guards with quiet possession. If the remoteness of the land was not deterrent enough, then certainly Thor’s presence would do. It’s an invisible thing, but powerful. A heady musk that rests just above the forest floor, drifting on the gentle stir of wind and permeating every bit of space. 

_An alpha resides here_ , it says, to anyone who would hear it. Which, most often, is no one at all. 

A faint whisper of wind is little comfort as Thor makes his way through the pines. The neck and shoulders of his shirt are ringed dark with sweat as he makes his way, choosing his steps with care as he traverses the sloping land. His hair is pulled back and off his neck and he grouses quietly to himself as he grips at his beard. Too long and heavy for this heat, vowing to himself to trim it back that evening as he touches at the rough-barked trunks of evergreens. Rapping his knuckles on them, and listening for sounds of life. 

He finds a suitable candidate for his purposes, an older tree, bare of needles and hollowed and dry from the unforgiving heat of the summer, and he retrieves the hatchet from his belt. Three hard swings and a great bough is brought down from overhead to the ground, and Thor grunts with effort as he places a boot on one end and brings the hatchet down onto the brittle branch once more. 

His shirt is caked to his back with sweat when he’s done, his chest rising and falling with the faint burn of a good effort as he gathers the neatly split branches and tucks them into the canvas satchel slung over his shoulders, until it’s full to nearly bursting. Enough firewood for the night, at least, and he turns to head back from where he came when a note drifts by on the wind. 

He stills, the hatchet still gripped in his hand. A bird calls, distant and echoing, and a drop of sweat breaks from his hairline as he turns his head to scent the air. 

The breeze grows on a soft gust, and there - he turns, following the faint tendril of scent, and sets out. The bulking satchel of firewood thumping forgotten against his hip as he makes his way across the mountain face. Pausing to lift his face to the wind when he loses it, casting a bit left and right as the scent grows from the whisper of one to something heavy on the back of his tongue as he pants in the oppressive heat. 

_Someone. Someone is here._

He comes over a wooded ridge, the scent going faint on one swirl of wind and then surging strong on the next, and he realizes that the scent is acrid with fear when a ragged gasp from below stops him in his tracks. 

A face looks up at him, hard to make out at first and then all he can see in the heavy shade of the pines. Dirty cheeked and open mouthed, staring up at him like an aberration. 

A gust of wind twists through the trees, turning and coiling and flooding him with scent, and he feels something in his knees weaken almost imperceptibly as the unmistakable, heady flavor of an omega washes over his senses. 

They stay frozen, watching each other. A predator coming upon a fawn in a meadow. 

She’s halfway up the ridge to where he’s standing, gripping tightly at a sapling that’s warping under her weight. He can hear her breath, gasping in and out of her lungs, and can see the tremble of her legs beneath her. Her hands and knees are black. Dirtied with fresh soil and what smells like blood from her frantic scramble up the steep ridge. 

He can hear her heartbeat. Deafening and rabbit-quick, as she looks up at him. Frozen in place as her scent clouds with conflict and thickens on the air. 

Neither speaks, and it occurs to Thor that he must be a sight. Coming over the ridge with fire in his blood and a hatchet in hand, standing over her and looking down. Reeking of power and intent and possession as his body blocks out the sun, casting her panicked face in shadow. 

If she turns and runs, she will fall. She seems to know this as she stays rooted to her precarious spot. Gravel slipping from beneath her feet and tumbling quietly down the rocky face of the ridge. 

Thor lets out a breath, quiet and controlled as he tucks the hatchet into his belt, and slowly drops to one knee. He watches her watch him as he extends his hand to her, open, and motions for her to take it. 

He watches her expression shift across her face, a blink of a moment of decision, and then her foot begins to slip and she lunges to him. Grabbing at his wrist as her foothold fails her, a ragged sound gasping from her lips. 

A hard pull and a shove back from the edge and he has her, bringing her up over the ledge of the ridge and spilling them both backwards with the force of it. She ends up beneath him, on her back, breathing heavily, and he pushes himself up and away from her with a hand planted near her shoulder. 

Her scent is overpowering this close, a stinging sour of panic laced with some cloying undertone that something deep in his belly knows is just the scent of her. He can feel it, so long since he has that even the most minute shift in his blood feels tectonic to him, as his body realizes what she is. What he is. 

She is unclaimed. He doesn’t need to see the nape of her neck to know, and it tingles something deep in him. That simple knowledge of something so intimate.

He pushes himself to his feet with some effort, soil sticking to the backs of his sweaty arms, and adjusts the satchel at his hip. Her eyes go to his. Wide, blinking. 

“The road’s that way,” he says, his voice a hoarse grumble from disuse. He points west, to where she’ll find the winding road that leads up to his cabin northbound, and slowly down the mountain southbound. “Take a right once you hit it and start walking down.” 

He watches her for a moment, and when she makes no move to stand, he turns and begins back the way he came. He shakes his head a little to clear it of the smell of her, and begins the steady march up the sloping incline, tracing the steps of an invisible route that will lead him back to his home. 

She follows. He’s nearly out of sight when he hears the faint scrape of her stumbling to her feet, and he lets out a tight exhale when he hears the sound of footsteps following in his wake. Following him north, not headed west. 

He doesn’t look back to her and doesn’t slow, moving at his natural pace through the forest. Treading familiar ground that he knows as well as the back of his hand, Forcing himself to run through a check list of chores he has to do before sundown to stop himself from focusing on the sound of her desperately trying to keep up with him. Crashing through brush and slipping on slick stone, gasping in the thinning air. 

It's near an hour later when he crosses the threshold of the clearing around the cabin, groaning softly as he takes the satchel from across his shoulders and sets it on the ground near the woodpile that’s stacked neatly along the cabin’s northern wall. He catches his breath quietly, resting his weight on one hip, and waits. Watching the treeline as sweat trickles down his back and soaks into his shirt. 

When she crosses through the treeline, her eyes go to him at once. She stops, her chest gleaming with sweat and heaving, and watches him. Her expression is calmer now. Less frantic than before, even as she breathes desperately through parted lips to catch her breath. 

Still, the air around her is thick. Clouded up with the bitter scent of permeating, consuming fear. 

Thor had assumed it was her near death tumble off the ridge that had sent her heart to racing there in the woods. Seeing her now, trembling with exertion from keeping up a brutal pace through impossible terrain to stay with him, and still reeking of terror, Thor’s not so sure. 

A single drop of blood breaks from a dark scratch on her right knee and rolls down her leg, and Thor blinks. Looking down and then back up, exhaling and touching at his beard. 

“You can clean up,” he says at last. Relenting. Motioning to an iron hand pump near the northeast corner of the cabin. “You can’t stay.” 

He turns and goes to the cabin door, leaning against the door with his shoulder to budge it open and tracking mud across the wooden floorboards with his boots as he moves to the little ceramic sink in the kitchenette and fishes around underneath for a rag and a bar of soap. When he comes back up, he sees her through the window. Working the pump with shaky hands and then dropping to her knees to drink from the spout of clear, cool water that flows from the spigot. 

He watches her for a moment, and then grabs a plastic pail from beneath the sink and goes back out. Something in her expression is raw when he hands her the soap and the pail, words looking like they’re at the tip of her tongue, and it makes him want to look away. Makes something foreign tighten up in his chest, and he does turn away from her, determined to busy himself so his ears don’t helplessly train on the sound of her working the pump handle. On the sound of her quiet intake of breath as she wipes tenderly at the bloody skin of her knees. 

He’s not had anyone in his clearing in a decade. More, maybe, when he thinks on it, as he moves through his list of tasks to be completed before nightfall. Checking the fence around his small garden and finding it secure, going into his dug-out cellar to retrieve a few jars of pickled vegetables and a few cuts of venison, wrapped in wrinkled butcher paper and preserved with salt, for his evening meal and locking it up tight behind him. 

He’d stumbled across a hiker or two in his time on the mountain, but they were spottable from a mile away. Oversized, brightly colored rucksacks with loudly clanging bear bells tied to them and apologetic smiles as Thor had wordlessly directed them back down the mountain. Embarrassed to have been lost and eager to make their way back from where they came. 

She is nothing like them. He looks up and sees her wiping the back of her neck with the dampened rag, looking over her shoulder and into the darkening forest like she fears what the shadows hold. 

He feels her in his space even as he works around her, her presence feeling like he’s wearing another man’s boots. It’s quiet in the clearing, the sound of distant birds disappearing underneath the soft cadence of the water pump as she abandons the cuts on her knees and palms and begins to give herself a full-body rinse. Moving quickly, like she fears Thor will send her packing down the road if she ever ceases motion. 

Time passes, slowly, quietly, as they exist alongside each other in a moment stuck in time. Thor tinkers around the clearing, needing something to occupy him, and she continues to wash herself. Shivering when the frigid water of the pump splashes over her feet, her eyes cutting to Thor instinctively at every sound of nature that rings out from the forest. 

He hears it before she does, looking up from where he was stacking the branches he’d collected on his woodpile at the faint rumble of diesel. Distant, but approaching fast. He frowns and straightens up, and then she hears it too. 

Thor very nearly flinches at the torrent of terror scent, flooding from her in a sudden rush, and he sees her in the corner of his eye stand quickly. The pail in her hands dropping to the ground as she backs, one step, and then two. 

The roar of an engine approaches fast, too fast for the wind and curve of the road leading up to the cabin, and Thor is already fucking done, his jaw setting tight as his hand settles on the head of the hatchet looped into his belt. 

A pickup truck bursts into view, flying from around the final bend in the road, gravel spitting from beneath the whirring tires, as the headlights flash over Thor’s garden, then over his shed, before the truck skids to a stop in the center of the clearing. The engine hisses under the hood, nearly steaming, and then the driver’s side door slams on its hinges. 

Someone emerges, fast, and Thor is taking a few steps forward before he even realizes he is. The opened cab door lets out a stream of alpha scent, caustic to Thor’s nose, as the driver comes around the hood of the truck, stopping in place only when he sees Thor. 

“Oh,” the man says, and Thor grits his teeth as the man’s scent flares bright, _alpha alpha alpha_ , in reflex to him scenting Thor on the hot summer air. “Hey, uh.” He doesn’t seem interested in Thor, even as his scent peaks in challenge, his eyes scanning the clearing around him. “Sorry, I’m just looking - have you seen, uh - “ 

He goes rigid, his head doing a hard double take as he looks over Thor’s shoulder, and Thor knows he sees her. 

The expression on the man’s face splits into a smile that is belied by the sharp twist of heated, angry possession that thickens up the air. 

Thor can hear her heartbeat behind him. Deafening, like a hummingbird’s. Something tightens up in his chest, grips at his lungs. 

“Come along now,” the man says, speaking to her. He is stock-still as he watches her. Eerily motionless as his voice raises a little. Like a rattlesnake eyeing prey. 

Thor takes a step and that draws the man’s eyes. Sharp, in the fading afternoon light as he regards Thor. 

“You’ve no business here,” Thor says. His heart is beating in his chest like a war drum, surging with purpose and strength. His voice is steel. Shoulders tight and square. Ready, instinctively. 

The man looks from Thor to her, then back to Thor. “Won’t be long,” he says, his eyes cutting back to her. “No need to bother the man,” he says to her. “Come on now.” 

Thor takes another step, between them, his jaw clenched. “She’s no bother.” 

The man’s eyes return to Thor, and everything goes still. They watch each other for a blistering, crushing moment, tension clouding up the air. 

And then, something breaks. 

The man lunges at her, viper-quick, and a sound erupts from deep in Thor’s chest as he lowers his shoulder and collides with the man in a bone-crunching slam. 

Instinct flares within Thor, flaming hot and consuming. Raging in his blood and clouding his vision as he and the man hit the ground and begin to fight. Fists and teeth and fury collide in a turbulent slew, and then Thor can’t think of anything as the alpha in his blood roars in time with the sounds erupting from somewhere deep, deep in his chest. 

He comes back to himself in waves. Slowly at first. Feeling the ground beneath his feet and the gentle kiss of a cool breeze against the back of his sweated neck. Looking around himself, confused, as his heart crashes behind his ribs. Seeing trees and a gravel road and - 

He’s standing near the last bend of the road, before it disappears around the mountain, his hands clenched into fists and his chest heaving in time with his ragged breaths. He turns in place, looking, as his mind whirls. 

It’s dusk, the sun just dipping below the tops of the trees of the clearing, and the buzz of crickets is deafening in his ears as he turns. 

He can’t make sense of it, of anything, but his chest is surging on something he can’t articulate. Something he can’t understand as he looks, his body aching, frantic - 

And then he sees a face peer out from around the corner of the cabin, hers, and all of the breath rushes out of his lungs. 

They move to each other quickly, tripping in their haste, and she pulls up to a sudden stop before him as her eyes rove up and down him, taking him in. Her scent is coming off her in waves, thick and heady and _relieved_ , and instinct courses through his veins as his heart hammers in his chest at the sight of her. He claws back at the urge that strikes in his belly to gather her up in his arm and crush her to his chest. To take her to the ground and scent her hard, fighting against the swelling tide of the urge that feels almost inevitable as she sways towards him from where she stands. 

_You don’t know her,_ he reminds himself, _she’s a stranger_ , but it fades into the background beneath a coursing rush of bodily instinct that is telling him everything but that. 

He reaches for her and she goes to him like she can’t stop herself. His hand curls around her jaw and he tilts her head up as he tries to catch his breath. There’s blood all over his knuckles and she goes still in his hands. Soothing and calm at his touch. Let’s him move her this way and that as he fights desperately to corral the instinct surging in his chest and checks her over through his slowly clearing vision. Her hand comes up to curl around his wrist where his hand is touching at her jaw, then her throat, feeling at his racing pulse with her finger tips. 

“He left,” she says, and the sweetness of her voice weakens his knees. He shakes his head and holds her still, to steady himself. “It’s alright, he’s - he’s gone.” 

There’s blood smeared across her cheek, but Thor realizes it’s from his own knuckles. “Are you hurt?” he asks. His voice is raw in his throat even as he grits his teeth and fights to regain control of himself. 

She shakes her head and he has to look away when she catches his gaze with hers. Overwhelmed with what he sees there, and he forces himself to take a step back from her. Looking out into the trees that are glowing gold with the setting sun as his mind returns to him with every slowing beat of his heart. 

The truck is gone, as is the man. The only sign he was ever there a lingering caustic tinge on the air. 

The air is cooling with the setting sun, and it helps clear his head as he holds out a hand to keep her from coming to him again. The day returns to him slowly, finding her in the forest and her following him back, and he looks to her and then down the darkening road that winds down the mountain. It feels like a lifetime ago that he saw her for the first time, and it occurs to him dimly that he truly has no idea how much time has passed. 

The sun is setting, though, and that spurs him somewhat. His mind defaulting to his nightly routine of tasks that have to be completed before sun down. 

He looks at her once more, thumbing at the hinge of her jaw, before he drops his hand and shakes his head a little. He moves past her then, walking up the gravel drive and towards the cabin, a small part of him aching with relief at the quiet sound of her footsteps following him up the road. 

He motions vaguely to the cabin when they approach it. Telling her that he has to finish up out here and that she should go inside and...he doesn’t remember the rest, but she goes, and the second he hears the cabin door shut behind her, he stops and scrubs his hand over his face. The hatchet is near his feet. Clean of blood, and something nasty turns in his chest and he can’t tell if it’s relief or regret at the sight. 

His nightly routine is so ingrained in him that he moves into it without much thought. Checking that the garden, shed, and cellar are locked up, checking the perimeter of the clearing, and then going to the water pump. Toeing off his boots into the grass and stripping off his clothes, grabbing the plastic pail and working the pump handle. It takes several bucketfuls of icy water to soak himself, and he grips to the clarity the chill brings as he scrubs himself all over with the rag and soap left on the grass after she used them. He scrubs under his arms and across his chest, working at the sweat caked to his skin, and he watches as the suds tinge pink as they work across the backs of his hands. 

It takes several more bucketfuls of water to rinse himself fully, and he wrings his hair between his hands as he steps back into his jeans. Gathering the rest of his clothes and boots in one hand and holding his jeans up around his waist with the other. 

He approaches the door and pauses, the knowledge that there’s a person in his cabin taking him aback for a brief moment, before he pushes the feeling aside and shoulders the door open. 

Inside, it’s a lot to take in. 

She’s gotten the stove going, bright flames filling up the cast iron belly behind the front grate, and she’s working something on the stovetop. Poking at something sizzling in the pan in her hand with a wooden spoon that she’d found in the kitchenette. 

She looks up and sees him at the door, holding his jeans up with one hand, dripping water onto the wooden floorboards, and she smiles. His whole body _aches_ from it, and he moves inside and shuts the door behind him. 

He moves to the small chest of drawers alongside his bed that’s shoved in the east corner and rifles through them. Finding a clean pair of jeans to put on, for lack of any better option, and a shirt that he tugs over his head, kicking his dirty clothes onto a pile on the floor and into the corner. 

He’s startled somehow, when he turns and sees her again. Like he forgot she was there in the forty seconds it took him to get dressed. The strange feeling returns from before - the other man’s boots feeling - at seeing her in his space, and he stands awkwardly as she brings the pan over from the stovetop and carefully slides a piece of meat onto two place settings she’s made up on the tiny table he keeps alongside the sink. 

She’s pulled his chair by the fire up to it, and comes back from putting the pan back on the stovetop with a milk crate, setting down on the opposite side of the table. 

Something blooms in the air, a small flutter of anxiety from her, and he cannot believe the responding swell in his chest. Instinctive and sudden, that tells him to go to her, to gather her up and scent at her throat until she’s calmed. He doesn’t. 

“Is this - “ she says, awkwardly. “Sorry, I just kind of - “ 

“No,” he says, taking a halting step forward and then stopping himself. “It’s - good.” 

They both sit, him on his chair and her on the milk crate, and after a quiet moment of watching each other, they begin to eat. 

It’s good, unbelievably so, actually, and Thor is dimly aware that he should be doing something here - showing something, some gratitude for the gesture - but his mind is whirling as his knees brush against hers around the tiny table. 

His heart is beating like a drum in his chest. Not frantic or rapid, but strong. Virile and strong and alive in a way that he hasn’t felt in as long as he can remember. He’s aware of everything. Of the smooth steel of the mismatched silverware in his hands to the cooling evening air slipping in from a draft underneath the door that he keeps meaning to fix, to her. 

He can feel her, somehow. Can hear the steady beat of her heart and feel the heat of her skin where their knees brush. Can taste the comfort in her scent, behind a thin layer of benign unease at...whatever they’re doing. Can sense a warmth in her that’s spiced and earthy and intoxicating, in a way that makes him lean back from the table as he chews. 

He’d forgotten. What this all was like, in his years on the mountain. What it was like to feel like the _alpha_ is he. How strong the instinct was when threatened. What it was like to smell an omega, close to him. Not in heat, not even close, but warming to him. Soft, around the edges, in a way that makes him want to lay her down and bury his face between her breasts. What it was like to see someone else in his space, touching his things. Taking up his space. Mixing her smell with his when their hands brush over the table. 

He realizes slowly that she’s been speaking, and blinks himself back to awareness. Feeling the back of his neck heat, when he realizes she’s stopped and looking at him. Waiting for an answer. 

He clears his throat, and his knee jarrs against the table leg. “I, uh. Sorry, what?” 

She smiles at him, dimpled and sweet, and his heart surges. “I asked if you were alright.” 

He blinks at that, looking at her. “Yes,” he says slowly, like he can’t understand what she means. His voice sounds like he’s been chewing on broken glass. 

She puts down her fork and reaches for him, taking his hand in hers. He looks down and sees his hand in hers as she turns his hand over and touches gently at his knuckles. They’re bloody still, scraped and starting to scab. 

“Oh,” he mutters, distantly surprised. “I thought the blood came from him.” 

Her thumb sweeps across the ridges of his knuckles and he looks up at her face to see her staring intently at them. Something in her scent changes, a subtle little twist that he can’t decipher, and then she puts his hand back down on the table. Tucking her own hands into her lap with apparent intention and then looking back up at him. 

“I brought this to you,” she says, slowly, and part of him can’t believe this is the most he’s ever heard her speak. “He could...return. You could have been killed - “ 

The skeptical sound that falls from his lips is unintentional but it makes a tiny huff of laughter bubble up from her chest anyway.

“I was just running,” she says. “I didn’t know where I was, or that it was your land.” 

He shakes his head at her but she continues.

“Then I followed you and brought him here. I don’t know why I did. Part of me thought you were going to kill me on sight at that ridge.” 

That, in turn, draws a small, humorless laugh from somewhere deep in his chest, and the corner of her mouth turns up, in spite of her tone. 

“I just,” she says. Picking her fork back up and pushing food around her plate. “Thank you. I could never...I could never pay you back for what you did for me. And I won’t be a burden to you. It’s clear that your way of life is not accustomed to visitors and I had no right to violate that. I’ll go.” 

Thor blinks at her, his hand curling into a loose fist on the table where she set it down. “Not now,” he says, glancing out the window, a little confused. The last light of day is peaking through the trees around the clearing. Complete darkness is but an hour or two away. 

She shrugs. “Follow the road right?”

“No,” he says, the suddenness and strength of his voice surprising even him. Incredulous as he looks over at her. “You’ll not go now.” 

The corner of her mouth turns up again. “What, would you stop me?” she says, voice lifting in a way that makes something flutter in his chest. 

“Yes,” he says, serious, and her expression shifts, quietly. From amusement to something else. 

Her scent blooms in the air, thick and cloying, and he sees her chest rise and fall in the fading light. There’s something, something there, just beneath the surface, something irresistible, and he finds himself lifting his nose to chase it. Blatantly scenting the air in a way that is not polite, his eyebrows drawing as she watches him and her eyebrows inch up, just a bit, and some color appears in her cheeks. 

It hits him like an ocean wave that it’s the scent of pre-heat. The faint aroma of the chemical shift before a heat takes root in an omega. Easy to miss, if you’re not looking for it, but it vanishes as quickly as it had appeared, like it had never been.

“Sorry,” she says, laughing proper then, a soft and throaty sound, and Thor’s cock aches in his jeans. “I’m - “ she holds up her hands and stands from the little table. “Don’t worry, I’m not - I’m good.” 

She is good, apparently. She and Thor bump elbows as they each try to awkwardly clean up in the same tiny space, and he can’t stop himself from lifting his nose when she passes by. Chasing, desperately, that scent again, but finding it gone. 

They tinker around the kitchenette, Thor filling the sink with icy water pumped from outside and sudsing up the plates while she puts the chair back by the stove and hides a yawn behind her hand. 

When the table is cleared and put back in place in the kitchen, she pauses. Looks at him. “It’s alright if I spend the night?” she asks. 

He nods, because he doesn’t trust himself to respond otherwise. His skin feels too small for his body. He doesn’t recognize himself, feeling like this. 

She nods back, like his answer was answer enough, and she moves past him and takes a folded blanket from where it’s resting atop the small chest of drawers, shaking it a little to work the dust off, before moving before the stove and sitting in his chair. She pushes off of the ground with her feet, and the chair begins to rock on a soft creak. 

He watches her, seeing the light from the flames dance on her cheeks as she wraps the blanket around herself and blinks a slow blink. 

“Is this okay?” she asks, her voice barely audible over the soft creak of the chair. She sounds a moment from sleep, somehow, already.

Thor’s mind whirrs uselessly. He gestures to his bed vaguely. “You should - “ he says, but she shakes her head softly in the glow of the fire. Knowing what he was saying without seeing him. 

“This is perfect,” she sighs. “Thank you.” 

Thor watches her for some time, helplessly rooted where he’s standing near the bed. Seeing her, in his chair. Nodding off and smelling like warmth and, somehow, him. 

He scrubs his hand over his hair, and lets out a controlled, quiet exhale. He turns to his bed, for lack of any other option, and steps out of his jeans. Glancing over like he might find her peering over the back of the chair at him as he undressed, but he finds her asleep, or close to it. Rocking gently in the soft creaking of the chair. 

He beds down as the last night disappears from the kitchen window, trying uselessly to remember what his day had been before he’d come across her in the woods. Trying to remember what he’d had to eat before then, or what chores he’d done, and coming up empty. 

As he closes his eyes, he can hear her heart beating. Slow, and steady, from across the room, and he allows himself to focus on it. An indulgence she’ll never know as the sound of her sleepy breathing lulls him slowly, quietly, to sleep. 

Something stirs him awake, a gentle touch of against his bed frame, and Thor lurches awake. Ready, at once, to push to his feet and _defend - to protect -_

But he collapses back to the bed on his first inhale, at the first brush of fever-hot skin against his own, and with sudden, blistering clarity, he realizes that she is there. Pulling gently at the corner of his quilt and whining softly as she crawls under the covers. 

He freezes, lying on his back and his chest heaving as she touches at his shoulder with shaky fingers under the sheets. 

The smell of her is everywhere. Overpowering, alluring, filling his eyes and nose and mouth all at once. An intoxicating, heavy thing that has his mouth flushing with saliva, and his nerves lighting all down his body. What he had a faint taste of before at dinner, but more now. Real and rooted as the heat radiating from her body strikes a match in his belly. 

They both lay still, both breathing heavily as her fingertips trace a soft pattern on his shoulder. 

“I’m sorry,” she gasps on a whisper. “I thought I - I didn’t mean to - “ 

She’s still there. She’s in her own mind. She’s able to speak. Thor’s mind turns over itself, useless and slow, as he tries to remember, from before. What that meant. 

_A soft heat,_ springs to his mind. A distant memory for health class in junior high. _Not a hard heat brought on by a cycle, but a soft one, brought about by stress or exposure to an alpha or any number of things. Shorter than a hard heat. More temporary. Sometimes a single knotting is enough to pull an omega out of a soft heat -_

Thor curses, too loud in the quiet of the room, and his cock fills, hard enough that his head swims with the force of it. Painful and aching as she curls up against his side. He feels the brush of her heated skin against his arm and shoulder, the drag of her breasts, and he kicks the covers down and off the bed. Sweat breaking out underneath his arms as she opens her mouth against his throat. 

Her body is rigid against his, even as the wet of her mouth smears over his racing pulse. She’s shaking her head softly, “I’m - I’m sorry,” she whimpers. “You don’t have to - I just, I can’t stop - “ 

Something burns in the air for a moment, lingering and blinding, as something builds inside of Thor. Flaring hot and singing along his nerves. Reminding him all at once how long it’s been since he’s taken in this scent. Since he’s gone hard with the knowledge that he’s needed. That he so desperately needs to give someone what they need. That he’s been the _alpha_ that he is in his very core. 

He takes in a breath and turns to her. Curling his hand around her jaw and pulling her into him. Opening his mouth against hers on a chaste, sweet kiss that deepens when she moans softly against him, tipping her body against his and setting his skin on fire. Thor shifts, giving over to the scent in the air, the arousal dripping in it, and pulls her underneath him as he opens his mouth over her jaw and bites down, hard enough to make her gasp and jolt beneath him, her hands coming up to grip at his arms desperately. 

She’s still murmuring against his mouth, trembling from holding back, and he takes her jaw in his hand and kisses her deeply. “Stop,” he says into the skin of her cheek as he scents her with hard scrapes of his beard. “I’ve got you. I know what you need.” 

She nods, like she understands, and then they move together, quickly now, in a rush. Thor over her, sucking at her tongue and biting at her lower lip, rubbing his cock against the crease of her hip, feeling his knot ache painfully at the base as he rubs his nose along the curve of her throat and swallows down the scent there. 

His hand grips at her belly and then her hip, positioning himself between her bent knees blindly, finding his place between them, and the breath rushes out of him all at once when he reaches down and feels the soaking mess of her sex against his fingertips. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Thor breathes against her throat, “You’re so - “ His hips bunching against hers, his voice breaking in his throat as she whines softly and opens for him. Lifting her hips against the press of his hand and whimpering at the first glide of his fingers there. 

He holds her belly down with one hand and strokes at her, back and forth, before he presses two thick fingers into her, driven by an urge he can’t articulate, and her back breaks on an arch as she moans a wounded sound. He feels at her there, at her very core, and strokes her. Feeling at the tight press of her with every bend and curve of his fingers as he mouths at her throat and nudges at her there. Crooking his fingers up and making her thighs clamp around his hand as her core starts to tremble. 

“Please,” she whispers, her hips tilting against his hand, seeking. “I need - “ 

He nods, desperate, because he knows. He knows. 

He pulls his fingers back and grips at his cock, smearing her slick over it as he moves close to her, pitching her thighs up over his as he nudges his hips against hers, He presses his forehead against her shoulder on a ragged sound as he takes his cock in hand and slides it against the slick mess of her sex. Gliding and gliding there as he sucks on her throat, parting the soft lips of her sex with the head of his cock, until at last he finds purchase, catching at her entrance, and fills her with a hard slot of his hips. 

They both still, panting hard and gripping at each other, and then her sex pulses down hard, sweetly around his cock, drawing him in, and he sets his teeth against the curve of her shoulder and he gives himself over to the instinct coursing through his veins like a poison. 

He is rough with her. Gripping her hips and fucking her hard, nipping at her collarbone and her jaw and anywhere he can reach as he fills her again and again. Reducing her to wordlessness, her head thrown back against the bed as each jolt of his hips rips a ragged sound from her, needing, needing - 

Thor is blind, overcome with desire and drive to pin her down and fill her. To knot her deep where she needs him. 

He feels her shift beneath him, as he drives home deep into her, rutting hard against a place inside her as her breath begins to lock up in her chest. Her hands spasm around his arms where they’re gripping him, and her voice falters in her throat as her back starts to go rigid. Rising on the swell of something that spurs him. That makes him slam himself into her and grip her tight as he feels her draw up tight like a spring beneath him. 

He pistons hard against her, teething at her ear, her throat, and then her body lurches on a wail and she tries claps her palm over her mouth but can’t as her back arches hard on a particular rough thrust, and then she’s coming. Her sex pulsing frantically on his cock, openining for him, as her head tips back against the bed on a ragged sound. Whispering a plea he can’t make out, clinging to him as her body wracks on waves of electric force. Excruciating and overpowering as her limbs lock around him and her whole body spasms in time with the hard milk of her sex on his cock 

He groans against her, hitching up one of her thighs and pressing hard. Instinct driving him now, needing to fill her tight. Overriding any common sense he may possess. Getting close and rooting deep as his belly quivers and tightens on a hard jolt, and then he spills in her. Turning his head and sinking his teeth into the meat of her inner knee as his cock spits and jumps inside her tight heat. Pressing deeper still as his knot begins to swell and root. 

They shake together, muscles trembling in time as they breathe each other’s air. Foreheads pressed to each other, mouthing softly at each other’s lips, barely able to think as he knots her deep. 

She continues to pulse around him, moaning softly on an orgasm that continues on with each clench of her sex on the thick ache of the knot in her. 

She feels for him blindly, touching at his beard and jaw and tilting her chin up to him, and he meets her with a kiss. Groaning softly against her mouth as he comes back down and feeling at where they’re joined with his fingertips. Squeezing his eyes shut hard at the feel of her stretched around him, unable to stop his hips from rutting in a soft little jolt. At home inside of her, like he was meant to be. 

They trade breathless, open mouthed kisses in the dark until he finally softens and is able to pull free. He feels her then, reaching down between her legs and dragging his fingers through the mess there and pressing it back inside of her as her breath hitches against his cheek. 

He means to move, after. To give her space and allow her freedom, now that her need of him has faded, but she nuzzles against his bare chest and whispers for him. Tangling her ankles with his shins and curling up against the broad of him as the moon peeks through the kitchen window. 

They drift off like that. Entwined, together, their chests rising and falling in time with each other as their heart rates slow and their skin cools and sleep finds them slowly, and then all at once. 

He takes her once more in the night, when she wakes him by sucking at his throat and pressing his hand between her legs. And he kisses her as he finds his way between her legs and presses in, groaning in soft unison when he fills her completely. She takes his knot quickly then. Easily. Clutching him close as she whispers a litany that Thor only half understands, coming apart on his cock when his knot locks inside of her and fills her up tight. 

He kisses her then, as he comes down. His balls drawn up tight as he unloads into her in pulshing gushes. Lowering his head to her chest and sucking lazily at her breasts. 

She ends up curled against him again, after. Licking at the hollow of his throat and making soft, contented sounds that stir something in Thor’s chest that he cannot name. Something frightening and strong that makes him want to _keep_. 

He reminds himself, blearily, as sleep closes in once again, that she may well be gone upon his waking, and he tries, until he falls under, to tell himself that he doesn’t care. 

Thor wakes to morning sunlight casting a wide, bright arc across his face and opens his eyes to see her next to him. Her head pillowed on her arms, watching him. 

He goes still, his breath catching in his chest, as he remembers, but then a smile breaks across her face, and a stuttering laugh huffs from his chest. Nervous and relieved as she grins at him from across the bed. 

The air is crisp and cool from the morning, the heavy scent of arousal and sex from the night prior replaced by the faint scent of morning dew and fresh bloom outside. 

She is watching him with clear eyes. Thoughtfully. Herself, again. The haze of a soft heat a distant memory. 

“Thank you,” she says, her voice soft and heavy with sleep. “For taking care of me. You didn’t have to, and I...I didn’t want to leave without telling you that.” 

He turns to face her, something going soft and sour in his gut. She smells like him now. Curled up in his bed, surrounded by his sheets. His chest aches, hollow. He nods. 

She reaches out to him and touches at his jaw, her fingertips scratching a little at his beard. “I’ve disrupted your solitude enough,” she says, her voice going a little soft. A little distant as her eyes search his. 

He begins to shake his head but stops himself. Allowing himself to just look at her in the early morning sun, knowing that she won’t be long. 

She’s watching him curiously. Her eyes roving his, like she’s trying to figure him out but can’t. Her hand finds his and brings it to her face, and she presses a soft kiss to the palm, her eyes still on his. He turns his hand and curves it around her cheek. Running his thumb across the swell of her cheek and fighting down the bitter feeling in his chest. 

She pauses for a moment, her brow drawing down a little, and then she’s shifting. Coming closer to him, and taking his face between her hands. She presses a gentle kiss to his lips. Chaste and soft, and when she pulls back a little, she whispers, “thank you,” against his mouth. She kisses him again, breathing against him, and something deep within him splinters, and he kisses her back. Moving against her, sliding his mouth over hers. 

She pulls back again, slowly, eyes on him. Her eyes full of a conflict he can’t decipher, so he pulls her in. Tugs her up against his chest and kisses her. His chest is starting to rise and fall at the press of her skin to his, and he sucks at her lower lip. Feeling her eyelashes against his cheeks. 

He pulls back, biting down softly on her lip as he does, and it draws the tiniest, softest sound from her. 

He opens his eyes and sees her do the same, blinking down at him, and a heavy beat passes between them. 

And then, they move. 

He pulls her close, drawing her onto his chest and across his waist as he grips at the back of her head and kisses her. Tasting into her mouth as she pants softly against him, her hands gripping at his bare chest reflexively at the slide of their tongues together. He pushes hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ear, and she shifts to straddle his waist, leaning down over him and pressing open mouthed kisses to his lips. Biting at him softly and nudging her hips to his like she doesn’t realize she’s doing it. 

Thor trails a hand down her back, touching at the faint ridges of her spine, and he lets out a hard exhale against her throat when his hand spans around the curve of her ass. He nudges his nose against the pulse in her throat as his cock stirs against his belly, and he spreads his hand over the swell of her rear, before he grips down on it, _hard_. 

She moans softly, startled, as her hips roll against his, and something hot and thick blooms in the air. Spiced and heavy on Thor’s tongue. He opens his eyes to see her looking down at him. Her brows drawn slightly, her cheeks flushed. Her hips nudging gently against his in a soft little rhythm. 

Not a soft heat, he realizes, as a groan falls from his lips. _Arousal_. Dripping from her every pore as she twitches softly against him. Rutting softly against him, almost mindlessly, her brows creased as the spice in this air deepens and grows. 

His heart thuds hard in his chest as he grips her tight again, pulling a whimper from her, before he slides his hand down farther. Past the curve of her ass, and between. 

She moans, broken and sweet, as his fingers brush against her soaking sex, and breath rushes from his lungs. “Jesus,” he says, voice thickening, as he presses two fingers into her, just like that, and she keens softly. Twitching her hips back against his hand. 

No heat. No biological imperative. Just blisteringly, achingly aroused and dripping slick around his fingers and all over his leaking cock. 

“Can I - “ he says, rushed, and she nods, yes, yes - and he turns her onto her back. Moving over her and letting his cock slide against where she’s soaked for him. 

He reaches down again and touches her there. Fingers stroking her silky folds from root to tip, allowing himself to watch as her expression shifts over her face as her head lolls gently to the side on the pillow. His finger finds her clit and rubs a slow, soft circle around the edges of it, just a whisper of a touch, and she moans for him. Opening her legs for him and tilting her hips against his hand. 

He leans down and presses a kiss to her lips, then her jaw, and then his cock aches with a sharp jolt of arousal as he makes a decision. 

He kisses his way down her front, taking each of her breasts in gentle hand and sucking on them. One, then the other. Something in his chest surging at the catch in her breath. At the way her hand tangles in his hair as he nurses at her gently with lips and tongue. 

He kisses her belly, then her inner thigh. Her eyes fly open when he shoulders his way under her thighs and her back arches off the bed in a violent spasm when he presses his open mouth against the slick mess of her sex. 

He closes his eyes at the pleasure of it. Cataloging the taste of her as she bursts over his tongue. Groaning softly as he sucks gently at the crest of her, caressing her with soft tongue and holding her hips down when she whines and rocks against his mouth. 

He slips a finger into her, then two, groaning softly when she clutches down on him. Drawing him in deeper as he crooks his fingers up and begin to stroke her in time with the soft pulses of his mouth. 

She makes a wounded sound and one of her fists clutches in the bedding, her belly contracting hard on jolt of pleasure. 

“Y-yeah,” she says, her eyes slipping closed, her other hand threading back into his hair. “Just like - _oh,_ p-please, yeah - “ Her hips start to rock softly against his mouth, using him to chase her pleasure, and he groans again, enveloping the crest of her sex with the hot, wet press of his mouth. 

The sounds his fingers are making are obscene in the soft morning light. Wet and sloppy as he presses against a spot inside of her again and again, pressing hard and making her hips buck up against his mouth. Something starts low in her bello and starts to build, tightening her thighs around his shoulders as her breathing goes shallow and quick. Rocking her hips against his mouth as he presses and presses inside of her. 

“I’m - “ she gasps, her voice breaking. “I’m gonna - _f-fuck_ , I’m gonna - “ 

She rises high and fast, her body arching up on a breathless peak - and one strong pulse of his mouth has her coming undone. Letting out a sob as her whole body shakes with the strength of her pleasure and a rush of moisture pushes from her pulsing sex. 

“ _Jesus Christ_ ,” Thor murmurs, deliriously aroused, his cock aching where it’s pressed against his belly, and she’s still coming down from it when he is kneeling up between her legs and gripping at himself. Pressing against the swollen bruise of her sex with his cock and asking, breathless, “Can you take me? Can - is it alright?” 

She nods frantically tugging at his chest to pull him to her, and he shoves into her with a hard rut. Knocking a cry from deep in her lungs as she takes him deep. He pauses then, feeling the last fading pulses of her pleasure wring on his cock, and he lets his eyes fall closed at the feeling of it. A the white hot clutch of her around him when he nudges his hips against hers. 

He feels her hand on his face, touching at his beard that’s soaked with her slick, and when he opens his eyes, hers are on him. Broken and open and raw for him, nodding to him and opening her legs to let him close. “Yes,” she murmurs when he bends low to press a wet kiss to her mouth and his hips start to go. 

In the light of day, he can see all of her. The flush of her cheeks and throat, the soft way her eyes roll back when he roots himself especially deep. The bounce of her breasts in time with every roll of his hips, the way her breath stutters and thickens when he grips her hips to fuck her harder. 

She lets him see. She does not turn away as he nudges his nose along her jaw and presses kisses wherever she will let him. She takes and she takes all he has to give her, moaning into his open mouth and begging in whispers, for more of him. Telling him _yes, please, like that -_

She comforts him when he finally stills over her. Gritting his teeth as his aching balls empty into her once more, rutting out his pleasure and seed into her even when it feels as if he has no more left to give. She holds his face between her hands as he slumps over her, as his hips give their last, soft thrusts. Bringing his face to her and tilting her head to the side. Encouraging him with soft words, asking for him to, and letting out a soft, contented sound when he begins to scent her. Slowly, with his mouth and his lips and his beard, scratching along the flushed shin of her throat and cheeks and shoulder. Marking her up with his scent. Wringing the last of his seed with one final clutch of her sex around him before he groans and pulls free. 

They stay that way for some time. Thor covering her and scenting her, his eyes squeezed tightly shut like if he opens them she’ll disappear. Nudging his nose all along her ear and hairline, pressing soft kisses to her chin and nose. Kissing her lips and tasting her deeper when she sighs against him. 

When he finally opens his eyes again, she’s watching him with the same curious expression as before. Like she can’t quite work him out. 

“You’ve ruined me,” she says finally, a soft smile turning up the corners of her lips. Touching her fingertips to his mouth. She looks over his shoulder, and around. At the interior of the cabin, all lit up with the rising morning sun. “How am I supposed to leave now?” she asks. Her eyes are creased around the edges in a smile, but her voice sounds heavy. 

Thor settles down beside her, watching the sunlight dance across her hair. He reaches out and lets his fingertips trail along her side. From her ribs and down, slowly, across the curve of her hip, and then back. Swallowing heavily against the sinking knowledge that he may never be able to do so again.

She’s still there. Curled up along his body. Her skin warming his as dust motes drift around their heads. 

A choice presents itself to him, then. A daring one. 

Thor shakes his head, slowly. Something turning in his chest that feels like fear, and something else. Something new. “No,” he says, remembering their talk from the night before. Taking what feels like a monumental risk. Jumping from a cliff with no parachute. “You’ll not leave now.”

She watches him for a moment, and then a smile breaks across her face. Slow and blooming, like a spring flower. He can hear her heart thud behind her ribs on a sudden uptick, and her scent thickens in the air. Smelling like summer air and new beginnings. “What,” she says, grinning at him. Teasing and warm. “Would you stop me?” 

Thor’s chest surges on something wonderful, and he finds the corners of his mouth twitching up, in spite of himself. “Yes,” he says, and she draws him in on a laugh and a smile. Pressing her mouth to his and feeling their hearts beat together. 

They stay like that for some time. Gently scenting each other and presses soft kisses to bare, warmed skin. In no hurry at all to break whatever this moment is. Unsure what lies ahead, or what it all means, but reveling in the feeling of it. Knowing that it just might maybe be something. 


End file.
